Overall, good read. I did not resonate with all of it but deeply appreciated a lot of it.
"I thought there was something wrong with the part of me that yearned to connect, to be open, to love everything in my orbit since it was what had caused me the most pain. But we do not have to give up our love and openness. We can still be deeply obsessed and in love with everything we interact with. We just need to realize when it's time to let go."

"Our minds are like parks. Without a mental bench to sit on for a moment of pause, we create no space to peacefully observe the goings-on, to choose which path we want to walk down, and what decision we should take next."

"We teach the people around us that romance doesn't have to be reserved for romantic partners. That we can be active participants in creating romance in our own lives."

"The aim is to control women. It always has been."
"We learn our place in the world early on. We learn that to threaten the social idea of what a woman "should" be by daring to be our full, authentic, and lively selves is a social death that could risk isolation, and so we learn to stay small."

"If we genuinely want people to be better, shaming is not the answer. Fear is not a sustainable fuel for growth-love is."

"It's such a fucking effective and even seductive way of escaping vulnerability. If we never slow down, we never have to feel hurt."

"By rebelling against the men who had hurt me and the patriarchal structures that have held women back for centuries -- with a fuck everyone, fuck this, fuck that, I don't need help attitude -- I didn't realize until it was too late that I had burned out and started to replicate the same hyper-independent cage that ensnares men to their toxic masculinity. The patriarchal trap that prevents men from being able to express themselves, ask for help, cry, indulge in and express their emotions. On my trajectory towards becoming an independent woman who relied on no one, I accidentally ended up denying the sensitive, feminine, and playful half of myself, the same way men are encouraged to."

"We never actually get to heal as long as a part of us still yearns for the people who hurt us to see how much pain they caused. If part of us still requires an apology from them to move on."

"Optimism is usually defined as a belief that things will go well. But that's incomplete. Sensible optimism is a belief that the odds are in your favor, and over time things will balance out to a good outcome, even if what happens in between is filled with misery."